


The Projectile Pizza Puke Incident of Texas

by orphan_account



Category: AFI
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-03-01 23:47:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2792108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Davey throws up on Jade's shoes and things ensue</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Projectile Pizza Puke Incident of Texas

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bananasintherough](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bananasintherough/gifts).



> This is for the wonderful, talented, hilarious, intelligent, and punx as fux Zimie. may you Boldly Go, Trekking forth into the Holiday season. The prompts were: 
> 
> -Prompt 1: Javey   
> -Prompt 2: hilarious pranks at Davey's emotional expense  
> -Prompt 3: forgetting a jacket on a cold night
> 
> I hope the pranks are prank enough for you, and that you're not secretly emetaphobic, otherwise this would be nearly unreadable for you.

Jade was staring wide-eyed at his black jeans, which only seconds prior, had been dry and clean for the most part, as far as standards of dry and clean went on tour. 

However, they were no longer dry nor clean now. Instead they were splattered with foul-smelling speckles of white and red, speckles which had just sprung from the more considerable puddle at his feet, which his favorite shoes were resting in. He stared dumbstruck, attempting to comprehend what had just happened in the few blessed moments of silence following the sound of Davey repetitively spitting, and preceding the eruption of hooting laughter and guffaws coming from every other guy in the room. 

As he put the pieces together, Jade concluded that in the middle of a perfectly average conversation, the normally strong-stomached and rarely embarrassed and virtually unsinkable Davey Havok had started choking, and incidentally puked his entire, huge pizza dinner up all over the floor of the hotel room they were supposed to be sharing for the night with five other people, and, due to his ever troublesome proximity, all over Jade, too. 

Jade was vaguely aware he was supposed to be angry or disgusted, but the emotion that was successfully overriding all the other ones right now was pure, white-out shock. Everyone else seemed to think this whole thing was hilarious (save for Davey, obviously),but Jade was speechless, thoughtless. He just stood there, knowing he should move, but mysteriously incapable. His shoes sat sadly, mired in chewed up pizza crust and stomach juice. 

It had been a perfectly uneventful post-gig evening: They were in Texas, which kind of sucked, but they found a Shakey’s which didn’t suck at all, so five pieces of pizza and several rounds of arcade games later, they were back at the motel room full, sated, and drawing straws for who was sleeping where. 

Davey was perched on the edge of the bed beside Jade, who was attempting to untie his then un-puked upon shoe. Apparently Smith told a particularly hilarious joke or something, because in the middle of a hefty swig of tap water, Davey started laughing, which then morphed into snorting, which then morphed into full blown choking, and before Jade knew it Davey was doubled over holding his gut, hacking mouthful upon mouthful of barely digested cheeseless pizza and root beer onto the carpet. And Jade’s tennis shoes. 

The rest of the room had been relatively silent during this debacle, but by the time Davey staggered off to the bathroom with a string of acidic vomit-drool hanging from his lip ring, they were all in stitches, clutching their own stomachs and laughing hysterically like some real comedic genius had just occurred in their presence. 

All save for Jade, who was wondering if those splatters of Davey puke were going to eat holes in his jeans if he didn’t wash them out soon. Then his brother smacked him on the shoulder, mohawk a pathetic half-mast flop against his skull and his eyes streaming in ill-contained mirth as he announced, “Davey just puked on you” as if Jade didn’t know. Then he snorted, followed by, “God that sucks.” 

Jade supposed it did suck, to be puked on. If anyone else puked on him, he would probably have tried to take a swing at them. Or at least he would have yelled a lot, before sprinting into the bathroom to tear off his pants and shower off any potential barf-remnants because barf was a revolting substance. That was the expected response of someone caught in the line of vomit-fire. 

However, he was more perturbed by the fact that he wasn’t as perturbed as he should be in such a situation. He felt kind of bad for his shoes. He liked those shoes. But mostly, he felt bad for Davey. Because puking was at least as unpleasant as being puked upon, and Jade had this empathy issue when it came to Davey where he felt unpleasant things which happened to him more intensely than he felt unpleasant things which happened to himself. 

Jade figured that this might’ve had something to do with his overall weirdness concerning Davey. For the entirety of the last year, he had been trying desperately and in vain to find some shred of evidence to support the hopeful possibility that he wasn’t actually fucked up over and in love with Davey, but instead just had some kind of temporary, casual infatuation with him that would fade away soon enough, releasing Jade from the troublesome empathy, and the constant compulsion to make out with him. 

Because, in spite of the puke puddle and the thick string of vomitty saliva he’d just seen swinging from Davey’s glistening lips, Jade did want to make out with Davey. It was a somewhat chronic condition. Even after he puked, Jade wanted to make out with Davey (once he brushed his teeth a few times, maybe). And if the pizza-puddle didn’t change that, then Jade was most likely fucked. 

~*~ 

Davey’s projectile vomit incident in Texas slowly morphed into the stuff of legend as the tour trudged onward. Davey was the butt of everyone’s jokes to begin with, seeing as he was the prissiest and most eccentric member of the band. He was easy to prank due to his prissiness and eccentricity. Replace the black hair dye with motor oil, sneak bacon bits into the ice cream sundae type of crap, because he was a vegetarian who dyed his hair. What were you supposed to do when you shared a bus with a vegetarian who dyed his hair? It was almost _too_ easy. 

However, being prissy and eccentric for the majority of his life caused Davey to develop a thick skin in the way of teasing, and the relentless affectionate bullying and jokes at his expense rolled off his back didn’t phase him. Everyone made fun of Davey, but Davey didn’t care. This resulted in the rest of the band to constantly shift from one reason to tease him to another, hoping to find the one successful taunt that would stick. That would actually get under his skin. Then, the puke thing happened.

Directly following the epic upchuck, Jade followed Davey into the bathroom. After all he had to wash his shoes off. He found Davey slumped red-faced against the counter, cupping his shaking hands under running water and bringing it to his mouth, rinsing it disgustedly and gagging foam-thick mouthfuls into the sink. Jade slipped in almost unnoticed, turning on the bathtub tap and stepping in, wadding up one of the cheap, ratty hotel washcloths and getting it damp so he could towel off the puke splatters on his pants. 

After a moment he heard Davey’s weak sounding voice sputter, “I am so, so sorry Jade. I cannot believe that just happened.” Jade was aware that if Davey had puked on anyone other than him, said person would be in the bathroom right now giving him ten thousand kinds of shit and telling him how gross he was. And most likely, Davey would have taken it beautifully, batting his lashes and saying that just because he wore mascara didn’t mean he couldn’t puke like a real punk, and whoever couldn’t be puked _on_ like a real punk wasn’t a real punk at all. 

This knowledge brushed fleetingly across Jade’s mind, and he wondered for a split second if he should think up something to tease Davey with right now, but he couldn’t manage it. Not with the way Davey looked so pathetic, white everywhere else save for the two violent smudges of color across his cheek bones, the green tint of his face and the sick, sweaty flush of his collar bones. 

Another chronic issue of Jade’s was his inability to really get onboard with the whole relentless pranking of Davey thing. It wasn’t that he didn’t join in (he did), it was just that he always felt kind of bad about it in the end. It was probably a direct result of his whole empathy problem. 

Funny thing was, everyone did it out of love. There was no true malignancy in teasing Davey, and Jade knew that. He got that. He _felt_ it. Too much, though, and it made him awkward, because there he was, teasing Davey not because he didn’t love him, but because he _did_ , loved all the stupid shit he did, loved his stupid black as black night hair, his stupid Danzig face paint. So in moments like these, when he was supposed to really lay into him with shit, he couldn’t He stood silent and stoic and stumbling under the florescence, watching Davey rinse his angled face in the sink, water catching in his lashes in this way that puke should have made unbeautiful. 

“Hey, no problem. It’s just puke. I’m not mad.” is what Jade said, sitting awkwardly on the edge of the tub and sliding off all his rings, which he aligned on the still slippery soap-shelf with absentminded, force-of-habit ritualism. They were mocking in their absurdity, namely the coffin and the skull. Black as black night, white as Danzig’s face paint. Really, really unfair. Jade cleared his throat. “What the hell happened? You just swallowed wrong?” 

“I guess,” Davey croaked, voice hoarse as he wiped his mouth, face still pinched and wincing. “I choked. No fucking warning. Suddenly all of dinner was on the ground. And you.” He shook his head, looking down at the tiles and scuffing his foot against them self-consciously. Jade didn’t think he’d ever seen Davey act so vulnerable or sheepish. It made him uncomfortable, made him feel scrutinized by t his own goddamn coffin ring. 

“Seriously dude, I am so sorry,” Davey said again, licking his lips nervously before cringing, turning back to swallow a couple more mouthfuls of water from the sink before saying, “I guess we’re gonna have to get a new hotel room.”

Wiping his mouth on the hem of his shirt, Davey kept his eyes trained down, not looking at Jade, and the world felt off kilter. 

\---

When Davey returned into the bedroom and everyone started a slow-clap, the teasing begun. Jade listened from the bathroom as he scrubbed the vomit from his jeans, put-off and confused by how out of character Davey’s was reaction to the teasing and insults were. He expected arrogance, pride at his own grossness. He expected Davey to challenge Smith to a puke-off and see if the volume of their stomach contents compared. he expected him to wrack up a few more gags from the pit of his stomach and puke them down Adam’s shirt or something. 

But instead, Jade heard Davey acting exactly how _he_ would in the situation: poorly concealed bravado. Davey was laughing uneasily at the taunts, obviously pretending like he didn’t care when he clearly did. It had to be the first time he had ever seen Davey _visibly_ embarrassed. 

When Jade returned, having finally regained his grip after the startling discovery of his potentially unkillable desire to make out with Davey, he discovered that they weren’t going to get a new motel room. In their brief absence, Adam had thrown a towel over the puke puddle, which Davey had then used to shamefully gather and scrub up the former contents of his stomach into the trashcan while everyone cracked up and gagged and goaded him. They dumped a bucket of ice onto the stain, opened the windows to air it out, and all got ready for bed. The room still smelled a little acidic and the incident was far from forgotten, but at least for the moment the hilarity has diminished and plateaued. 

Everyone was kind of doing their own thing, teeth brushing and pissing and showering and listening to walkmans or watching Chris Rock comedy routines on TV. The quarters were tight, as always, but Jade could tell that no one wanted to be bothered as they wound down towards the inevitably shitty few hours of sleep before they woke up and did it all over again. 

Jade watched Davey from the corner of his eye, disturbed. He was lying on a sleeping bag between the two king mattresses, even though they had already drawn straws and Davey was among the four who won bed dibs. His hand was absently kneading between the peaks of his ribcage,eyes shut and mouth grimacing slightly. 

“Feeling okay?” Jade said stupidly, leaning over the edge of the bed and poking Davey’s bicep. It was peppered with gooseflesh, and Davey balked, jumping away from him. The sleeping bad rustled beneath him. 

“Yeah. I think so. I guess so. I dunno, throwing up is gross. It’s so gross is makes you wanna throw up,” Davey explained ineloquently, raising an eyebrow. 

“It’s worse when you’re in the line of fire” Jade joked half-heartedly. Davey smiled a smile that didn’t even come close to his eyes, but instead plagued his cheeks with a tightness, a redness. Jade immediately stopped touching his arm, afraid of this weird, embarrassed Davey he had never met before. Or at least not since high school or something. “I was kidding,” Jade added dryly. “It’s really not as bad as you’re making it.” 

Davey pursed his lips, making the skin near the ring go white and bloodless. “You puke on me and then see if you trust my platitudes.” 

Jade shrugged. _Yeah well you’re not in love with me_ , Jade thought. What he said was, “I never trust your platypus.” 

“It’s an untrustworthy creature. Mammals shouldn’t lay eggs,” Davey said back, only half as dry as Jade ever said anything. He was grinning now, acting like himself for the most part. Jade’s limbs felt warm and tingly with relief.

“Hey. You drew a bed, you know. Why are you on the floor?” 

Davey rolled his eyes, shivering as the heavy, nicotine stained hotel drapes blew in, shuddering from a gust of cold Texas night. “Because Smith refuses to share a bed with me. He’s worried I’ll puke in his ear once he falls asleep.” 

Jade snorted. “That would be a pretty spectacular prank.” 

“Yeah. If I had anything left in my stomach to puke. But whatever, I don’t feel like arguing with him tonight, so here I am. Hunter won’t care. I’m only bummed because I’m freezing and my stupid jacket is all wet because I wiped like a gallon of barf spit on it. It’s soaking in the bathtub right now. And I’ll tell you what. I think this might have been cosmic retributuon for all my failed attempts at veganism. I think this was the vegan god punishing me for the pizza....so this time, I’m really gonna do it. I heard the vegan camel’s back break under the final cheese straw.”

Rolling his eyes, Jade marveled over how he could find such a creature so miraculously attractive.”Hmm good luck with that.” Davey had been valiantly attempting veganism for the better part of a year, and Jade suspected that one puked pizza wasn’t going to make much of a difference. He thought the intent was cute, though. 

“Have faith in me,” Davey said seriously, shivering. 

Jade shook his head slowly, noting Davey’s bare forearms and the hairs there, drawn together in a pitiful defense. His mind made a decision he did not consent to. “Here.” He unzipped his faded black hoodie which used to have a Descendants patch sewn into the hood, still warm from his skin, and tossed it at Davey. “Just don’t get any body fluids on it, okay?” 

Davey’s eyes flickered, too black to belong to a real person, and Jade felt slow and stupid as he watched him put it on. “Thanks.” 

“Also, if you want, you could share this bed with me. Adam’s supposed to be in it but he won’t mind switching to the other one with Smith.” The words came out before Jade could properly weigh the risks of such an arrangement. He and Davey used to share beds all the time; they got used to each other’s sleeping habits back when they shared a room at the frat around the time Jade first joined AFI. But then they stopped. Jade liked to think it was a slow, natural shift in habit which occurred organically for external reasons, but he knew that they actually stopped being bed buddies because he got awkward about it because he started becoming aware of his perpetual desire to make out with Davey. 

But here he was, offering it like it was fine or something. Like he would actually be able to sleep with Davey’s skin and breath and bones a whole touchable two feet away. Right. 

Davey beamed, then shot up and into the bed with Jade, carding a hand through his hair. “You are way too nice a guy. If you threw up on me a half hour ago, I wouldn’t want to sit next you, much less share a bed, dude.” He plopped his face down onto a pillow, which he then proceeded to punch into a suitable shape. Something Jade greatly missed watching him do each night before retiring. 

_That’s because you’re not in love with me_ Jade thought, adjusting his own pillow and resigning himself to a night awake, stricken with anxiety, condemned to a life of wanting to make out with a guy who puked on him. 

\---

For the next few days of the tour, everyone latched onto the pizza puke incident with feverish vehemence. Every other word out of someone’s mouth related back to Davey and Davey’s projectile vomit. If the bus got stuck in stop and go traffic, Adam would ask Davey fifteen times if he wanted Dramamine and an air sick bag. If Davey happened to go to the bathroom to take a piss, Smith would jab him with his elbow on his way in and ask him not to get any barf on the seat. If Davey exited the bathroom after his piss, Hunter would grin at him stupidly and ask him if he enjoyed his puking session. Every meal began and ended with Roman Vomitorium comments, and constant goading that made Jade so nauseous he didn’t even want to eat. Every running joke pertained in some way to Davey’s supposed new inability to hold food in his stomach, every needling taunt at Davey’s expense. 

Porkchop and Fritch each won handfuls of crappy, cheap toys at Shakey’s for playing the Arcade games, rubber snakes and wind up toys. Seeing as these visually represented the infamy of the evening, they kept on leaving them places deliberately so Davey would find them, like in his make-up case and under his pillow in the bunk. Fritch had even taken to tying little notes around them, declaring things like “Don’t get to close! you might puke on me” and “how does pizza sound, Dave?” 

Davey maintained a fairly reasonable grasp on the semblance of nonchalance for the first day, just smiling awkwardly every time someone made a joke, his cheeks coloring. However, the fake-blase was soon replaced by indignant fury. Apparently, this was the one thing Davey couldn’t take being teased about, so of course, it was the one thing no one would let go. 

No one but Jade, that is. Jade supposed he had the most reason out of any of them to tease Davey, after all ,those jeans had been ruined, his shoes hadn’t smelt right for days following the incident, and Jade’s stomach turned queasily every time he recalled the sensation of warm, acidic, pizza puke splattering all over his legs. Regardless, Jade couldn’t make himself feel anything but a vague sense of sympathy for Davey’s social plight. Empathy problems. 

Davey initially started a quiet retaliation by glaring at anyone who mentioned the incident, but had since taken to more extreme measures: slamming cabinets and the like. He’d even thrown his walkman at Hunter’s face a few times, not to mention a slew of other, less dangerous items like empty soda cans and soft cover novels, one of which had lost a few pages after colliding with Smith’s back the other night. 

Things peaked when Davey broke all of the limbs off of Porkchop’s purple donkey wind-up toy, screaming things along the lines of, “SEE HOW YOUR TOYS ENJOY CONSTANT TORTURE, YOU STUPID ASSHOLE,” before he proceeded to throw the shattered plastic at Adam, who had been innocently sitting at the table trying to eat a cliff bar in peace. 

They were playing a show in Arizona that night, and everyone was avoiding Davey, who was now officially on rampage. Said rampage did little to deter the puke jokes, however, which were now just being tossed around behind his back instead of to his face, causing the whole band and crew sans Jade to be in a constant state of hushed snickers. 

Smith, who was borderline psychotic and permanently drunk but otherwise the most perceptive of the bunch when it came to social nuances, noticed that Jade had remained relatively quiet in regards to the whole Davey-puke thing. So of course, he confronted him about it when they got to the venue in Phoenix, when most everyone was occupied with finding and eating lunch in the surrounding area.   
r32;“Dude, why aren’t you giving Dave shit about barfing all over you?” Smith asked bluntly as he and Jade walked side by side to the venue after getting coffee. Jade stopped in his tracks, looking at his brother with narrowed, incredulous eyes. 

“Uh, because I’m a nice guy?” He said, hand involuntarily tightening around his foam cup of coffee, making the contents slosh dangerously near to his hand. The real answer was _because I’d rather not think about the barfing all over me incident at all, seeing as it confirmed my year long, sneaking suspicion that whatever thing I have for Davey is more than a temporary infatuation, and I’m probably not ever going to not stop wanting to make out with him_ but Jade thought this real answer was best suited to the more internal depths of his own frustration and shame, instead of hanging out there in Phoenix, AZ where his brother and everyone else could ridicule him for it. 

“But he _barfed_ on your _shoes_. It’s a perfect example of something you can set your “nice guy” shit aside for and really sink your teeth into” Smith’s voice had a begging quality to it like he wished Davey had puked on _him_ , because he would have really made the best out of the situation. “You’re missing out on a great opportunity. It’s like you have some weird crush on him.” He declared meaningfully, crossing his arms. 

“Or maybe you’re just an asshole,” Jade argued, but what his brother said clearly managed to get under his skin and stick there, because in the middle of the sound check he did something miraculously, miraculously stupid. 

He didn’t even entertain the very real possibility that he could be reduced to a handful of splintered purple plastic just like Porkchop’s donkey. He just did it. Because this whole thing was frustrating for him, too. Because he was probably never going to top wanting to make out with Davey, and that sucked. 

He was just sitting there, plucking at his guitar and tuning it absentmindedly while Davey did his awful voice warm ups. They sounded like a combination of the velociraptors in Jurassic Park, and someone being violently ill. So of course, as Jade’s mind hitched on the thorn-like memory of his brother calling him out on his Davey-thing, he turned to Davey before he even realized it and said with a dry, biting edge of sarcasm, “Davey, if you’re gonna puke again can you at least aim in the other direction? I really need these pants.” 

Davey whipped around to stare at him. At first it just looked shocked that his one ally in all this had evidently turned on him. He seemed small, vulnerable and pale in his too-large S.O.A shirt. Then, the betrayal visibly dawned on him, and his face changed from slack shock to something terrifying, something animal. 

Jade’s heart stopped. His life flashed before his eyes. 

The crisp, gelled chunks of Davey’s devil lock quaked with the violent fury in his body, his eyes narrowed to black slits. Adam and Hunter started cracking up, smacking their knees and creating a chorus of “good one Jade!” but Jade himself was petrified in utter horror, eyes locked on Davey’s fierce, balled fists. He prepared himself for Davey to physically attack him and incidentally beat the shit out of him. He prepared to be torn limb from limb like the wind up toy. 

But instead Davey just spun on his heels, chucked his microphone at the stage with a resounding electronic cracking noise, and stormed out of the theater yelling, “I’m fucking _done_ with you assholes,” over his shoulder. Then he flipped off Jade. 

The laughter faded as the singer of the band disappeared, because without the singer of the band they pretty much couldn’t do sound check, and without a sound check they pretty much couldn’t play that night. “Shit,” Jade mumbled, raking a hand through his hair, staring at his puke-shoes which had since had a puke washed off of them. 

“You should go get him,” Hunter said nervously, toeing at the microphone, which had rolled to his side of the stage. “He might try to drive. In which case he’ll crash,” Hunter said this with a straight face but of course, Smith and Adam snickered. Jade shot daggers from his eyes at Hunter, thinking to himself that seeing as this was the one and only time he’d said anything about Davey’s puke incident, and Hunter was one of five other, more criminal culprits in the matter and _they_ really should be the ones to chase him down. Especially considering that Jade was all in love with him and junk and tried to avoid circumstances in which Davey was pissed off at him.

But of course, no one knew that. So Jade ended up being the one trailing after Davey’s wake of destruction, head hung and hands jammed in the pockets of his puke-free pants.

\---

He found Davey a few blocks away from the venue, sitting on the curb on a somewhat residential street, his bigass nineties headphones on and his walkman in his lap. He looked pretty pissed off, but he miraculously didn’t throw anything at Jade once Jade got within throwing distance, instead he just glared, one brow raised warily. Jade sat down next to him, eyes fixed on his shoes, preparing endure a short but painful stretch of Davey’s ill-fated silent treatment. Davey generally had a lot to say, and failed horrifically every time he tried to ignore someone. 

So of course, after a few awkwardly quiet minutes, Davey huffed an irritated sigh and turned his walkman off. “Sorry I yelled at you,” he said dully, hanging the headphones around his neck, where the flush of anger was just now beginning to fade. “I realize you’re the only one who hasn’t been a huge douche about this.” Davey leaned minimally closer to demonstrate the great extent of this difficult apology. “I took like, my collective irritation out on you, which wasn’t fair. Even though you threw me under the bus.” 

Jade could sense the warmth radiating off of Davey’s body, and he stood up abruptly. 

“No, it’s okay. I was being a douche, too. I don’t know why I did that,” he mumbled, knowing very well why he did it. He examined Davey, his small dark silhouette on the sub bleached Arizona pavement. “Wanna walk?” Jade offered his hand, pulling Davey’s up to stand, noticing his clammy palms were still shaky with anger. Without making eye contact they continued along the street, which was lined in similar adobe houses with cactus and gravel gardens. 

It was Davey who finally spoke. “I just got tired of everyone ganging up on me. I shouldn’t have blown up at you. You’re the least annoying one.”

Jade shrugged. “But everyone gives you this much shit all the time. Why this thing? You’re usually so unfazed by it.” Jade explained, eyes fixed on the red gravel driveway of the house in front of them. 

“I wasn’t fazed,” Davey grumbled, full of lied. 

“Dude. You broke Porkchop’s purple donkey.” 

“That was Fritch’s donkey. Porkchop has the rubber snake and the gorilla. I would know because they keep popping up in my belongings delivering messages,” Davey snapped, carefully not addressing Jade’s actual point. Jade sighed. “Dude, same difference.” 

Davey heaved out an exhausted sounding sigh, crossing his arms defiantly. “Okay, fine, I’m letting them get to me. But this wasn’t about them, it wasn’t about them teasing me and shit. I don’t care what they think. I didn’t puke on them.” Davey suddenly stopped, troubled gaze turned upwards to the almost unreal looking blue sky, eyes watering as he squinted against it. Jade’s stupid heart started pounding.

“What, this was about me?! Dude, I don’t care you threw up on me. It was gross but I’m totally over it. I mean clearly, I’m hanging out with you, right? I haven’t teased you?” Jade’s voice came out with a hint of desperate shrillness to it, and he didn’t really want to think any further about the implication of such blatant emotion showing through his words. To make things worse, Davey wasn’t looking at him, instead watching the horizon stoically like a meercat surveying its dessert terrain. He looked silly and out of place with his black hair, black make up, black shirt and pants. Jade still wanted to make out with him.

“Exactly, it was fucking gross. I sabotaged being attractive to you, ever.” And as Davey finally looked at him; He declared this with such utmost conviction Jade was sure it was a revelation of sorts, something he was supposed to have a grand reaction to. Based on the way Davey was all watery-eyed and freaked out looking, probably a negative reaction. Davey’s eyes were wide, fixed on him in this _Okay. Okay I said it. Punch me already if you’re gonna punch me._

But Jade just stood there dumbstruck and silent, just like he did in the puddle of pizza puke. Davey’s eyes burnt holes right through his sternum, sizzling awfully in the dry, dusty Arizona heat. Finally, he made his voice work.“Why...wait. You’re worried I won’t find you attractive?” he sputtered out, voice small and choked and dissipating away to nothing under that too-blue sky, this spec of incredulity only one grain of sand in all of the southwest desert. 

Davey looked at him with this hurt expression, cocking his head and his mouth parting a little like he just couldn’t believe what a dick Jade was for saying that. For making him repeat himself, for not reading between the lines and assuming what Jade could not assume because this wasn’t a thing he could trust.

“Never mind...” Davey started to say, but Jade cut him off.

“If I witness you puking copious amounts of pizza, which I don’t even _like_ that much to begin with, all over my favorite pair of Adidas and I still want to make out with you pretty much all the time, I think that constitutes as me still finding you attractive. I think it constitutes as more than just attraction.” Jade finished lamely, his eyes making the slow descent from Davey’s confused face to the sun-bleached pavement of this poor residential street that they were subjecting to their respective floods or blockades to. 

“Did you say you want to _make out with me_?” Davey said after a few agonizing seconds of Jade hating this particular crack on the sidewalk he was standing over, and trying to force down all the other things he wanted to say, like _I think I love you,_ and _you’re a brilliant artist_ and _your mouth is a constant point of self destructive interest to me. Even when you’re spitting vomit-spit into the sink in a crappy motel room. I’m sorry but it’s true._

“Yep. All the time. It’s a problem, actually.” Jade said curtly. He waited for Davey to react in any number of unsavory ways, because no one wanted to have to deal with the awkwardness of a friend confessing their deep desire to tongue kiss you, even if one just confessed his own desire to remain attractive to said friend.

“...Oh. Even after I threw up on you?” Davey’s voice had gotten all weak and small, and it lamely reminded Jade of baby bird without feathers all new and pink and delicate. And then he realized he was a huge revolting sap. 

“Especially after you threw up on me,” Jade’s voice was terribly grave, and he made himself look at Davey, Davey in his S.O.A shirt and too much eyeliner. Davey whom he very much wanted to make out with, still. 

“That’s disgusting. I’ve brushed my teeth about a hundred times since then so if you want to make out with me now, I promise it’ll be a much more pleasant experience. And I’d let you.” Davey said nervously, stepping closer to Jade as the trembling promise of half-broken laughter made his words shaky and unsure. Jade tilted a minimal distance away from Davey, kind of terrified because he still was in danger of spewing poetry and sonnets to him. 

“If you tell me to, I really will so I need to know you’re not bullshitting me and this isn’t just witty banter or something,” Jade mumbled as Davey closed the remaining few inches between them and incidentally answered his question, sliding both his hands into Jade’s hair and letting their lips bump together inexpertly. Jade stumbled a little, caught off guard by the force of Davey’s warm, perfectly puke-free lips sliding wetly against his own. He recovered though, hands coming to rest hesitantly at Davey’s waist as he tried to remember how to kiss, letting the tip of his tongue slide hesitantly across Davey’s lower lip before deciding this was actually happening and licking his way into Davey’s mouth. 

And finally, Jade was making out with Davey, and the feel of Davey’ tongue swirling and pressing into his, the taste of his spit, the stomach-dropping slipperiness Jade could imagine elsewhere on his body stopped his nervous uncertainty and replaced it only with ineloquent truths: _it’s about time_ and _Dave_ and _don’t stop_ and _finally, finally, finally._

Davey’s hands were moving gently and unassumingly at his skin then, very suddenly under his tee-shirt and terribly cool on Jade’s fever hot stomach. Jade wanted very badly for Davey to keep touching him there, and not just there but everywhere, but he managed to allow the very coherent, logical, and Jade-like trickle of worry to paralyze him under Davey’s nails, which had been digging into his lower back. “Wait,” He mumbled and pulled away, his forehead pressed into Davey’s as they panted, suddenly too aware of the very public display of affection he’d just committed in the suburbs outside one of Arizona’s major cities. 

“Huh?” Davey said, sounding very dazed. His eyes were half lidded in a way Jade had never seen before, like they were too heavy to open all the way and under all that make up. His mouth was insanely, obscenely pink and Jade closed his eyes to prevent further distraction. 

“There’s other stuff,” Jade forced himself to admit frantically, his eyes flying open again to spite him. He resisted the overwhelming urge to push one, if not all of his fingers into the wet, perfect heat of Davey’s parted mouth. “I’m actually totally in love with you. I’m sorry. It sucks.” He said in a rush, his stomach lurching. 

Davey laughed at him them, a burst of warm air from his mouth exhaling heartbreakingly against Jade’s own lips in this way that made Jade’s guts twist and tighten with too much longing to contain in his suddenly small-feeling body. “That makes two of us,” Davey then said honestly, eyes dark with a sincere rawness. “And yeah, it sucks. Royally.” 

“Oh good,” Jade managed to say dumbly before they were kissing again, tripping along the pavement and under the shade of a nearby cactus plant with hands and lips and teeth everywhere. Mere blocks away, back at the venue, the rest of AFI and crew were probably wondering where they were, and if Davey had obliterated Jade’s dignity like that of Fritch’s purple donkey. They were probably still under the impression that for days, they’d been getting under Davey’s skin for once in their life. However, with a smug smile that Davey kissed into a different, more promising shape, Jade realized with a warm satisfaction that really, it was him that was getting under Davey’s skin, all along.


End file.
